Sunday 21 March 2010

Adoptees of Color statement on Haiti

This statement pressed so many buttons for me in terms of 'rescuing,' and ownership of, vulnerable people, ideas of good families and bad families, colonial abuse...
"We uphold that Haitian children have a right to a family and a history that is their own and that Haitians themselves have a right to determine what happens to their own children. We resist the racist, colonialist mentality that positions the Western nuclear family as superior to other conceptions of family, and we seek to challenge those who abuse the phrase “Every child deserves a family”  to rethink how this phrase is used to justify the removal of children from Haiti for the fulfillment of their own needs and desires. Western and Northern desire for ownership of Haitian children directly contributes to the destruction of existing family and community structures in Haiti. This individualistic desire is supported by the historical and global anti-African sentiment which negates the validity of black mothers and fathers and condones the separation of black children from their families, cultures, and countries of origin."
Read the whole thing at Adoptees of Color Roundtable. I found the statement through Truthandhealingproject.

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